Never let it slow us down
by mockingjelly
Summary: It's crazy, how close you become to someone after hearing them scream for hours. Peeta/Johanna. Missing scenes and post-Mockingjay.


**A/N: **During and post-Mockingjay. Title inspired by Christina Aguilera's "_We Remain_." Hope you enjoy. :)

* * *

_I._

"You may not remember it, but you're crazy in love with her, Bread Boy."

He shakes his head in disbelief. "I _was_. But then she betrayed me and tried to kill me. It's her fault if they took us."

She laughs. The whole situation would be just hysterical if it wasn't tragic. His eyes narrow as she keeps laughing like a maniac, and he spits, "What's wrong with you?"

Her laughter dies in her throat, and Johanna stares at him, wide incredulous eyes scanning his face. Despite the annoyance and anger in his tone, it's the first time that the words leaving Peeta's mouth are not insults or threats or crazy fits about Katniss being a mutt.

"You want to know what's wrong with me?" she asks him. "Okay." And then she takes off her shirt, revealing her scarred skin; ribs scarily showing, long, deep cuts littering her body. "_That's_ what's wrong with me."

He stares at her, bewildered, not even blinking. And then he tries to bring his hands to his hair, but the ties restraining him to the bed keep him from it. "Not real, not real, not real," he repeats through gritted teeth as he closes his eyes, his entire frame shaking. "You're lying!" he yells.

"No, I'm not!" Johanna yells back. The doctors rush in, and she violently pushes the first one who tries to ask her to leave. "No, I'm not leaving! You think that small talk with Miss Sunshine who loves everyone is gonna help him? It won't!" She turns to Peeta again, grabbing one of his hands in hers. "You gotta believe me, Peeta. She's not the enemy. Snow is. The Capitol is. You love her."

"_She_ doesn't love me."

Johanna almost wants to slap him then, but then she remembers that he's not himself right now – besides, she's pretty sure that the real Peeta never realized that he wasn't the only one in deep. Truly, she wants to slap them both. "Yeah? Well, the girl you were in love with _died_ inside when they took you. Now she's just as crazy as you are, except she's the damn Mockingjay so she's actually of some use for all the other crazies who believe in that shit. So the next time you think she doesn't love you, think about that."

-:-_  
_

"I remember hearing you scream for hours."

She shrugs almost nonchalantly. "Trust me, I remember hearing you, too."

"You didn't break down," he states simply. There's no emotion in his tone; no pride, no amazement, no surprise. Just a statement of a memory, one that they didn't alter, hoping to fuel his hatred for Katniss.

"Neither did you."

He chuckles. "Then why do I feel like if she dies, I'm dead?" he asks sarcastically. He almost sounds like Haymitch. Or like herself, Johanna thinks. "I mean, I'm a traitor, right? I spoke on television, called for a ceasefire. So if what you say about her is true, and she somewhat cares about me, I guess that's the only reason why I'm still alive. Something happens to her, I'm dead."

Peeta's incredibly perceptive, for a crazy, hijacked boy. But Johanna doesn't tell him that. Instead, she gets up from the chair beside his bed and turns to leave. When she reaches the door, she says, "Trust me, Peeta. If she dies, you'll die. But not for the reasons you think."

-:-

"I remember loving her now."

"It's not like I've been telling you for weeks," she tells him, not even lifting her head from her pillow. He was granted access to the hospital, allowed to leave his cell-like room to visit her. He's not tied up to the chair this time; he's still labeled mentally unstable, but he's not considered a threat anymore – at least, not to anyone but Katniss. "So what now?"

He's startled by her question. "What do you mean?" he asks her, his brow furrowing.

"You said you remembered loving her. That's completely different from loving her. So, what now?" she replies, finally tilting her head to the side. She regrets it instantly, because the sadness on his face is just too much. It's a rollercoaster, seeing him switch from madness to sadness, fury to joy, heartache to confusion.

He worries his lower lip between his teeth for a moment, his fingers clenching in her bed sheets. "I remember…I remember how she looked the first time I saw her. But then, I – I remember when she told me it was all lies, how she'd acted during the Games, and…"

"And you want to kill her, because Snow taught you that you shouldn't trust her," Johanna finishes for him. "He tortured you until you forgot that you'd die for her. That you were ready to. And that she was ready to do the same for you."

"It doesn't really matter now, does it?" he asks, his voice barely above a whisper. "I'll always be a monster. It won't get better."

She rolls her eyes. "You know, she might love you because you're such a dork, but I don't. So save the tragic act for Katniss, Lover Boy. I'm tired now," she adds, dismissing him with a wave of her hand. The guards see her and walk towards them, but not before she can add, "She's gonna kill him, Peeta. _Snow_. It'll be over soon. Promise me you won't let him win."

She looks so distraught all of a sudden that he can't deny her anything, even though he doesn't understand why he cares so much, or what it is that she expects from him. "I promise."

-:-

"What do you think they're going to do to her?" he asks, voice trembling, his fingers tightly clenching around hers as they sit together on the floor.

"She shot Coin. That's worse than everything you've done, since you get to walk freely as long as you go see Aurelius," Johanna says. When he squeezes her hand to the point of pain, she adds softly, "But she's the Mockingjay. She's a mentally unstable seventeen year-old girl who suffered a lot and just lost her sister. I don't believe they'll do anything to her. Unless they want another rebellion."

"Do you think Haymitch can save her?"

Johanna laughs. The idea of old, drunk Haymitch saving the day is ridiculous. _Except not_. She turns to look him in the eye, and smiles softly. "Haymitch convinced us to die for that girl. He won't let her down."

"I don't know what I'll do if something happens to her," he admits in a low whisper, bending his head. "Loving her and wanting to kill her is all I know."

She wants to tell him that she knows; she really does. She knows what it's like to have no one left you love. But she doesn't know what it's like to have been turned into a weapon, into a monster that wants to kill the one person they loved the most. "Stop being so melodramatic, Mellark," she finally tells him, nudging him in his side with her elbow. "She'll be just fine. And then the two of you will hopefully learn to deal with your shit together and I won't have to listen to you anymore."

He smiles.

-:-

"You're leaving?" he asks, frowning as if he didn't understand.

"Non-crazy people have the right to do whatever they want, you know," she teases him. "So yeah, I'm leaving. Someone's got to look out for Annie."

And just like that, her smirk is gone. Peeta sees it, and gently, he says, "I remember the arena. When we found you and Nuts and Volts. Finnick was happy to see you. He'd be happy to know you'll help with his child."

She almost wants to tell him that he doesn't know that for sure, with the little time he spent with Finnick, but it's a very sweet thing to say – something that the real Peeta would say. She's hugging him before she knows it, before she can question it. "Do you remember you promised to not let them win?" she whispers in his ear. She feels him nod, his chin bumping in her bony shoulder, and she adds, "I didn't get my head shaved so the two of you would spend the rest of your lives in this limbo of memories and pain. So get better. And go home."

* * *

_II._

"Sae said that she hadn't seen her smile since she came back, but I made her sad too. How can you be happy and sad at the same time?" he asks her over the phone, on his first night back to Twelve.

Johanna sighs. Why is he asking _her_? How is she supposed to explain what it is to _feel_? She remembers the boy from the arena, sweet, genuine, silver-tongued Peeta, and how the words flowed easily; how she'd watched them in that cave during their first Games, his confession of love, his childhood memories. She remembers all the little touches, brush of fingers or soothing hands stroking and caressing, all the looks they gave each other when they thought no one was watching. How is she supposed to explain to this boy what it feels like to be human; to hurt and to heal, to live and to love?

She's Johanna Mason. Everybody she loved was taken away from her, and the few people she's allowed herself to care about are just as scarred as she is. She doesn't even remember what it feels like to _not_ hurt.

"What did you do?" she just asks him.

"I went to the woods," he starts, his voice slightly trembling. As if he still couldn't decide if it was a good idea or not. "I don't even know _how_ I knew where I could find the flowers, but I did, and I was planting them along the side of her house when she saw me. And then she ran away."

She doesn't have to ask what kind of flowers. Only Peeta would do something like this.

"Did I do something wrong?" he asks, lost and confused. "I thought she'd appreciate it. I was just…" He swallows hard. "_She_ was a sweet, brave girl. I just wanted to do something for her."

Of course he would.

"Trust me, Lover Boy. If I still had a heart, even _I _would swoon."

She hangs up, smiling. They'll be fine.

-:-

"You love him," he says, huge grin on his lips as he looks at her, arms full of baby and stuffed animal.

She narrows her eyes at him, and he sees it in his head, her axe hitting Cashmere in the chest. But then he focuses on the smile she's trying to suppress, and he chuckles. "The kid cries and pees and pukes on me all day long," she snorts, handing him the little boy. He snuggles immediately to Peeta's chest, chubby fingers closing around the fabric of his shirt. It's a long moment before she adds, in a whisper, "How could I not?"

He remembers Johanna and Finnick running to each other on the beach. He remembers them sleeping curled up to each other. He remembers many things now. Making Finnick and Annie's wedding cake. The way she'd looked in her wedding dress on the pictures, and how Katniss had looked in it before her during the Victory Tour. Hearing Finnick weep after Mags died. Finnick and Katniss making silly faces as they woke him up. The feel of her arms around him. The look in Annie's eyes when they'd told her that Finnick wasn't coming home.

He gazes down at the baby, sea green eyes slowly fluttering close, dark bronze curls on top of his head; Finnick's nose and chin, Annie's mouth. And then he looks up at Johanna, who looks at the little boy like he's the only thing in the world tethering her to sanity.

Maybe he is.

Peeta understands the feeling.

"You're a natural with him," Johanna says after a moment as Peeta rocks the baby in his arms. "Plutarch came to Four after he was born, all excited. Wanted to interview Annie, take pictures of him. I can't even start to imagine how he'll react when you two have one, his precious star-crossed lovers. I bet that if it's a girl, he'll offer to throw the biggest wedding party for them in a few years."

"Jo!" Peeta chokes and coughs, staring at her with wide eyes.

"What?" she asks, spotting Katniss and Annie walking back towards the Victor Village. She leans into him, diabolical smirk on her lips. "Is it the idea of your future daughter marrying little Odair that throws you off, or the idea of _making_ said future daughter?" He glares at her, too stunned to reply. Her grin only grows wider. "Oh, come on, Peeta! I spend my days with Crazy and a four-month old baby. I need normal people to talk to, about normal life stuff. Stuff that we're supposed to do now that no one wants to kill us anymore."

"Since when is _any of us_ considered normal?" he asks, cocking an eyebrow at her.

He's got a point there.

"And who said that no one wanted to kill _you_ anymore?" he chuckles as he stands, smile on and walking towards Annie who's already opening her arms to pick up her son.

-:-

"_Peeta_," she says softly, his name just a low, gentle whisper on the other end of the line. It's her baby voice, the one she uses for little Finn when she thinks that no one's watching. It's a voice that no one would _ever_ associate with Johanna Mason. "It's okay."

"No, it's not," he groans through gritted teeth, his knuckles turning white as his hands clench around both the phone and the back of a chair. "You haven't seen her face…"

"I don't need to," Johanna says in a calm voice. "I get it, okay, Peeta? You hurt her and you hate yourself for it. But it's just a little bruise."

"But what if I had had a knife or something? I – I could have…" He's almost choking on his words, panic edging in his tone. She hears him breathe in deeply, whispering strings of _not_ _real not real not real_. "I could have killed her," he finally says. "I _can't_ let that happen."

"And what are you going to do?" she asks him, and the silent gasp that follows tells her everything she needs to know. "You can't live without her. And she's a wreck without you. Guess you're stuck together forever."

"It's not that easy…"

She almost wants to laugh, but she knows it would just about kill him at this point. Really, what's a little bruise for a girl who's been through starvation, madness, two arenas and a war? She knows Katniss enough to be certain of one thing: she's _not_ scared of Peeta. If anything, she's scared _for_ him and probably hates herself for leaving him alone right now just as much as he hates himself for hurting her in the first place.

Never-ending circle of self-loathing and pain. _The story of them_.

"You're right," Johanna says after a moment, "It's _not_. Nothing ever is. But you've fought too hard to give up now. You've lost too much to let them take her away from you, too." She's lost too much to let them go through the same. She doesn't wish that on anyone; everyone that deserved it is _already_ dead. She hears him sigh heavily, strangled sobs caught in his throat. For the first time she wishes she were here and not in Four. Annie and Finn are doing just fine, and now she realizes that she's the only one who has no one; even Haymitch has Katniss and Peeta. She's the only one who doesn't fit – except maybe when it comes to understanding what being broken means. "Peeta?" she calls out softly.

"What am I supposed to do now?" he asks her, and she hates that voice because she hears the chills in it, and she's back in that cave with them, hearing him plead Katniss to stay. Her tributes were already dead by then, but she had been unable to look away; she wishes she had now, because hearing that fear in his voice reminds her of the terror she'd felt herself as she heard him scream again and again, Snow torturing him for information that _she_ possessed – and they all knew it.

There's a bottle with her name on it in Haymitch's house next time she visits them.

She's about to tell him to go get his wife when she hears the door open, and her voice calling him out – soft, gentle, loving. Just like when she sings. How can he doubt that she'll always come back to him, when the only other person Johanna has ever heard her talk like that to is the little girl she loved more than anything?

And when Katniss Everdeen loves, she loves too much.

Well, _Katniss Mellark_ now.

She expects him to hang up and run to her, but he doesn't. Instead, a few seconds later she hears Katniss' voice and she can just picture them all curled up together, heads together over the phone.

Because now she's supposed to be their therapist?

-:-

"Fancy meeting you here."

She heard him coming closer about two minutes ago. Katniss is right: he is loud, and it has nothing to do with his prosthetic leg. Johanna lifts a hand to her face to wipe the sheen coat of sweat on her forehead, and slowly, she puts her axe down, staring at the huge pile of wood she's made. "What are you doing here, Bread Boy?" she asks him as she finally turns to look at him. "Aren't you supposed to bake me cookies or something?"

He cocks an eyebrow at her. "So you only came here for my pastries?" He places a palm over his heart. "I'm offended, Jo, really."

Johanna snorts. "Your little wife rubbed off on you. You were funny before. Now you're just depressing."

Peeta smiles, leaning his shoulder against the nearest tree. He watches her for a while as she fills the wheelbarrow with wood, busying her hands with something so she doesn't have to look at him, and he almost contemplates letting her be. Katniss and she are the same about that; they don't like to talk, and he's used by now to Katniss just storming off the house to find refuge in the woods when she can't say what it is that's bothering her. Eventually she always comes back.

He doesn't like leaving things unspoken, though.

"Katniss told me," he says softly, watching her as she goes still. He's glad for a second that she put her axe down. "She didn't mean to upset you."

"She didn't upset me," Johanna shrugs with unease. "I just… I don't want to talk about this."

"First time we asked Haymitch, he slammed the door on us. Spent three days with his liquor," Peeta replies. "But then one night he came to our house and he talked for two hours. Came back the following day and did the same, and that for a week."

She didn't know that; Katniss sure didn't put it out that way. She showed her their book, turning the pages on everyone they loved and lost. Everyone who got caught in the crossfire. Everyone Snow tortured and hurt and killed and took away from them. And then she asked her if she wanted to talk about _them_.

Her family. All the children from Seven that were killed over the years. Blight. Her Games. Finnick.

"Why are you doing that anyway?" she asks him blunty, finally turning to look him in the eye. Damn those soothing blue eyes of his.

"It helps," he just says. Writing these memories down has to help him, because he still forgets things every once in a while; but what good can it be for anyone else? They're here and _they're_ gone. "It reminds us that we didn't fight for nothing."

He's behind her before she knows it, one hand gently squeezing her shoulder. And then he's gone, back to their house, back to his wife. Giving her the space she needs.

She thinks about what he said for the next hour as she gathers the wood and brings it back to the shed. They didn't fight for nothing. They didn't die for nothing. And refusing to talk about them is like forgetting them.

She starts with Finnick, and the night he came to her after Snow killed them all. She spends the next week pestering Peeta about every detail as he paints the scene, and he takes it without flinching, just listening to her as Katniss writes everything down.

Crazy how two unstable kids seem to have found more peace than her.

-:-

"Jo? You still there?" he calls out to her.

She is. She's just stunned. "Yeah, yeah, I heard you, Mellark," she says. "I'm just trying to come up with an original bread pun, but I can't find any and I hate myself for it," she adds, laughing nervously.

"Haymitch beat you to it," Peeta laughs. "Something like fifteen years ago, asking Katniss about a little loaf of bread in her oven."

"Damn."

They're having a baby.

After all these years, she thought that the baby issue had been dealt with. Katniss had said no, and when Katniss said something, she rarely ever changed her mind. _Peeta_ seemed to be the exception to her every rule.

"Plutarch is going to be over the moon," she teases, thinking about the man and how excited he will be when he hears about the first child of two living Victors coming to the world.

"If Plutarch comes anywhere near my child, I'll borrow your axe and stick it in his head."

She laughs. Peeta's weapons of choice are flour and sugar, but maybe the idea of turning Plutarch into a pie isn't as lethal and scary as an axe or an arrow. "You sound like a dad already," she tells him sweetly.

Goddammit. Finn Odair is eighteen now. Where does this baby voice come from?

She can hear Peeta smile. She's pretty sure he won't ever stop smiling now. "Well, you have the next six months to train and sound like a _godmother_," he just says.

And then he hangs up.

"That kid is ruined already," she says, but no answer comes.

Poor kid. Those idiots are stupid enough to have chosen Haymitch as godfather.

Surprisingly though, the odds seem to be in this child's favor, for once.

* * *

_the end_


End file.
